Afar Tectonics and Geomagnetism
Afar, Africa provides a unique field area for the study of incipient seafloor spreading. My focus has been in studying the deformation of Afar that has resulted from rift propagation and localization using the paleomagnetism of volcanic rocks that cover the area. Besides tectonics, these thick sequences of basalts also record exciting geomagnetic field behavior. My results so far are published in two papers:

Acton, G.D., Tessema, A., Jackson, M., and Bilham, R., The tectonic and geomagnetic significance of paleomagnetic observations from volcanic rocks from Central Afar, Africa, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 180, , 225-241, 2000. [download pdf reprint]
Raw paleomagnetic data sets were provided with this publication and are available from Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Acton, G.D., Stein, S., and Engeln, J.F., Block rotation and continental extension: a microplate model for Afar, Tectonics, 10, 501-526, 1991.




Other images from Acton et al. (2000).